One day a Tarahumari carrier passed us just after we had gone into camp about three o'clock in the afternoon, bound for the same point we expected to reach in three days' hard travel by mule-back. I wanted to send a message by him to this place, and on ascertaining when he would reach it was, as my hearers will easily infer, somewhat astonished to find out that he expected to make it that night, and I was afterward informed that he had done so.
Not a great many years ago the mail from Chihuahua to Batopilas was carried by a courier on his back, who made the distance over the Sierra Madre range, a good 250 miles, and return, or a total of 500 miles, in six days. Here he rested one day and repeated his trip, his contract being for weekly service. Alongside of this the best records ever made in the many six days' "go-as-you-please" contests that are heard of in the great cities of the United States sink into almost contemptible insignificance. I could give a dozen other instances, but these are enough. Of course these runners make many "cut offs" from the established mule trails when their course is along them, and they thus save distance, but making all such allowance their endurance is still phenomenal.
[CHAPTER VI.]
| THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES—ON MULE-BACK WESTWARD FROM CARICHIC. |
As our next month was passed on mule-back, and Mexican mule-back at that, I think it would be not at all inappropriate to make a brief dissertation on this kind of brute for the necessary merits and demerits of the journey.
The Mexican mule is a sort of a cross between a mountain goat and a flying squirrel, with the distinct difference that its surplus electricity flows off from the negative pole instead of the positive, as with the goat. It is in its meanderings on the mountain trail that it shines resplendent, but with a luster wholly its own, that can be no more compared with any other than can the flash of the diamond be compared with the fire of the opal. I would like to place it alongside of the American mule for comparison in the "deadly double column" of the newspaper, but the Mexican beast would kick out the intervening rule and "pi" the type before enough was up to form an opinion. On the mountain trail this distinct species of mule was never known to fall, although he has an exasperating and blood-curdling way of stumbling along over it that would raise the hair of a bald-headed man on end. Many a time I have watched the mule I was compelled to ride with a view of discovering his methods of trying to frighten me to death as payment for past injuries. Oftentimes the trail would lead past dizzy heights or cliffs, where one could look sheer down far enough to be dead before he reached the bottom should he fall, and every few feet along the trail of not over a foot in width it would tumble in a foot or so and again take up the original inclination of the mountain, or about that of the leaning tower of Pisa. Here the mule would always be sure to stick one foot over and stumble a little bit, but regain its equilibrium at the next step, having clearly done it intentionally, and for no other purpose than pure maliciousness. One can imagine the cool Alpine zephyr that is wafted up the vertebræ with sufficient force to blow the hair straight up on end. If you have touched the beast within the last three or four days with the whip, or dug into its sides with the spurs when it was absorbed in melancholy reflections, it'll be sure to remember it when you are climbing over the comb of a cliff from two thousand to three thousand feet high, and at the least movement of your feet or twitching of your fingers it will throw its head high in the air, like a hound on the scent, and go stumbling over every pebble and blade of grass on the dangerous way, evidently trying to make you regret that you had ever tried to punish so delicate a creature. At any other time you can turn double somersaults on its back, or act like a raving maniac, and it will not increase its funereal march a foot a day as the result of your actions. Whenever a trail leads exceptionally near a cliff, before it turns on the reverse grade down or up hill, the Mexican mule never fails to go within an inch of the crest and let his leg over with a slight quiver, as he turns around.
All these mountain trails are full of little round, hard stones about the size of marbles, and even larger ones, hidden underneath a carpeting of pine needles. These are liable to make a mule stumble if two feet are on the stones at once, but this is very seldom, although they always go sliding over them on the steeper trails. It is wonderful how these round rocks, hidden under the pine needles on the trail or off it, will throw a human being prostrate if he dismounts a few minutes to take a walk on a slope and stretch his stiffened limbs. Of course the mule, under headway, is liable to walk over him before it can stop or the person pick himself up.
There is another pastime in which the Mexican mule delights, and in which you won't. It likes to deviate enough to go under every low-branched tree on the trail, and so universal is this trait of character that the trail seems to lead from one low tree or vine to another, just as the mule has a mind to make it. The dodging of limbs and branches among the pines, cypresses, and oaks in the high lands was not so bad, but down in the tierra caliente or hot lands, where brambly mesquite and thorny vines were tearing crescents out of your clothes until you looked like a group of Turkish ensigns, it was much more monotonous.